Miles' Summary

One curious aspect of my practice is the seeking that I do. The pressure that I feel to come up with something profound to say in my weekly writings, to use 5 dollar words to explain ethereal concepts in a language that, at times, seems designed to add complexity rather that limit it. It brings up the question "Why bother to practice?" Am I doing this merely to impress a few folks? To play with the mind and fancy myself intellectually or, perhaps more perverse, spiritually superior? More of the Miles self-improvement project.

In the midst of the feelings of openness and space that practice brings are many unsavory aspects of self that I finally am open enough to look at squarely. Jealousy, envy, arrogance, hatred all come up from time to time to have a flirtation with my mind. With shame I look at them initially, a sense that I am not as good as I should be. But who is this "I" criticizing? What is the problem, other than the death of a self-image that I created to make a me that I thought I would like better. What a silly process, because of course I am going to find out about this farcical me, and watching it die will be painful. So, then, what is I? In asking this question, I realize that "I" is the concept of I, an image created to shield me from a part of myself I don't want to look at. The thicker the walls of this "I" castle, the more devastation it brings when it falls. What lies beneath this I castle? The mind drops into a new space, where each image that is born in each millisecond dies in the same millisecond, flashing and fading away, an inexorable dance.

Trungpa Rinpoche said once that when confronted with the chicken shit of the mind, it is best to stop dealing with the shit and start dealing with the chicken. The process of objectively looking at unsavory parts of the self can lead to a new self-image with a conviction - "I'm never going to do that again," "I've changed now," "There's no way that I will get that drunk again" - but this is simply furthering the process. More chicken shit. Or it can lead to just watching it float by, allowing it to pass through like any other thing, dying its natural death and allowing the natural cycle of flash and fade to continue. Dealing with the chicken by just watching it dispassionately, disinterestedly, but with tremendous focus and precision.

 
Conversations with Myself

Where are you, me?
Just one time to see
That part of you that's me
Are we really one or two?
Chatting fro and to
It seems that I am I and you are you
But who's to say what's what and who's who?
The less I ponder about you,
The more I see what's true
Am and are, not me and you